In politics, as in landscape, ''Tis distance lends
enchantment to the view', and the past might be all _couleur de rose_
in the imaginations of the people were it not represented in these
ill-governed states, where the 'lucky accident' of a good governor is
not to be expected in a century, and where the secret of the
responsibility of ministers to the people is yet undiscovered.[11]
The fortress of Gwalior stands upon a tableland, a mile and a half
long by a quarter of a mile wide, at the north-east end of a small
insulated sandstone hill, running north-east and south-west, and
rising at both ends about three hundred and forty feet above the
level of the plain below. At the base is a kind of glacis, which runs
up at an angle of forty-five from the plain to within fifty, and, in
some places, within twenty feet of the foot of the wall.
The interval is the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of
the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all
stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone
hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and
chippings of the rocks above.
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